Empty
by gillianmorsee
Summary: Malcolm is starting to feel depressed, and he doesn't know what to do. Sometimes he even thinks about dying. TW for suicidal thoughts and possible actions; also a possibility for a character death
1. The Beginning of the End

Setting: Season 4 directly after Forwards Backwards. None of the rest of the season is included, but it is canon up until that point.

 _I'm the hope of the family - at least that's what they tell me. In my own eyes, I seem hopeless. When I look in the mirror, all I see is a stranger looking back at me, one with vacant eyes and thin lips in a straight line. Blank._

 _Sometimes I want to puke, to prove that there's something inside me. Most of the time, I feel like I'm empty; but I'm not. I'm full of darkness and bitterness. My heart is as cold as ice. At least I can still hear it beating._

It was the day after my birthday - I had just turned fifteen. And I was still laying in bed at three in the afternoon. Everyone else was up and about; I could hear the TV playing and I wondered vaguely if Dewey and Reese were watching it together. Mom and Dad had both already left for work. I'd been finding it harder and harder to wake up on weekends, and today was no exception. I just didn't have the energy to get up, get dressed, shower, brush my teeth...It all just seemed like a hassle to me.

Eventually Reese came into the room, and towered over me as he gazed down at me stretched out on the bed, entangled in blankets.

"Why are you still in bed?" I just shrugged noncommittally, rolling over so I wasn't facing him. "Dude, you've been in here all day. How about we go to the tunnel?" I finally spoke then, and the sound of my voice disgusted me because of its blankness,

"You go ahead. Maybe Dewey would want to go with you." Reese punched me in the shoulder then, and it stung, but not in a bad way. I mean, yeah, it hurt, but at least it felt like _something_.

"I don't want to go with Dewey, butt munch. I asked you. You never do anything fun anymore." _Ouch_...that remark stung more than the punch did, mostly because I knew he was right. I managed to sit up then, finally, and when I looked at the clock, I realized I had been laying here for a lot longer than I had thought. It was almost 5 o'clock.

"Isn't Mom going to be home soon?" I asked vacantly, not even looking at Reese. "Wouldn't she be mad if we aren't here?" Reese rolled his eyes.

"When has that ever stopped us before?" I shrugged, knowing, again, that he was right. Reese grunted and then bared his teeth, grabbing me by the shirt, and then dragged me out of bed. "Dude, come the hell _on_. I may not be smart, but even I know it's not good to lay in bed all day."

I was dazed, my eyes glossed over as I looked at Reese. For a moment I didn't realize what had happened, but then I looked down at my feet on the floor and I registered that Reese had just lifted me out of bed. I lifted my eyes from the ground back to him and I finally got a good look at his expression. What I saw there sent a spike of pain through my heart: Reese actually looked _worried_ , a very unfamiliar emotion on his face.

Bile rose to the top of my throat, and I felt as if I was going to puke. Reese, who had always been the tough one, was actually worried about me. I must not have been hiding my depression as well as I thought I was. Suddenly I felt like breaking down and crying, but I held back, instead marching emotionlessly towards the bathroom. When the door closed behind me, though, I broke.

I avoided looking in the mirror as the tears glided soundlessly down my cheeks. I had a feeling Reese was still standing in the bedroom, waiting for me, and I didn't want him to hear me crying. I mean, sure, we had cried in front of each other before...but there had always been a good _reason_ to cry. Now, I was just crying because I hated myself, and that wasn't hardly a reason at all. Bile rose to the top of my throat again, and with a violent jerk, I gagged it up into the toilet.

I puked into the toilet until there was nothing left in me; I just wanted to expel the horrible feelings that always accompanied me now. Eventually Reese opened the door, and I must have looked like a mess: splotchy, red face; eyes with huge dark bags underneath, and disgusting bile pouring out of my mouth and nose. Since I hadn't been eating, the puke was just stomach acid; liquid and burning.

And that's when Reese did something that made me realize how screwed up I really was. He patted my back, trying to _comfort_ me. I knew that if he wasn't making fun of me, it must be serious. I wondered fleetingly if the rest of the family knew how messed up I was now, how disgusting.

When no more puke would come and the tears had long dried up, I finally stood up again and involuntarily saw myself in the mirror. I gagged at what I saw there, but still no more puke would come. I looked like a ghost of myself. A broken, sad memory of the person who I used to be. The person who got excited for school, excited for the future ahead...The person who smiled and joked with his family…

I averted my eyes then, the hollowness returning in my chest. Reese was still standing behind me, but he looked lost for words. I finally spoke, my voice gravelly because my throat was sore,

"Still want to go to the tunnel?" Reese just shook his head wordlessly. He was clearly struggling with the thought of what to do, how to help me. I just wished he would act normal again - maybe tease me or do something stupid - but his silence only confirmed how far gone I was. He thought I was too fragile to even poke fun at, and that thought disturbed me more than anything else. Now even _I_ couldn't pretend that everything was alright.

I opened the medicine cabinet and grabbed a few ibuprofen to curb the splitting headache forming in my skull. My eyes lingered on an orange medicine bottle, my Dad's. I had forgotten that Dad took Xanax for his anxiety. The bottle was nearly full, and I considered what would happen if I swallowed all of them.

That was the first time I thought about dying.


	2. The Bridge

_I thought puking would make me feel better, but it doesn't. It just makes me feel emptier than before. Even when I cry I feel like I'm leaking out my feelings, leaving behind a vacant shell who feels nothing. I just wish I could feel normal again._

Now it's been a four months since that day and I'm still the same as ever, but I think I hide it a lot better now. Reese doesn't seem worried about me anymore and none of the rest of my family have ever seemed to notice. Well, what can I expect? Mom and Dad are always working - or else we wouldn't eat. And Dewey is still pretty young; he probably wouldn't even understand. And Francis...well, he's hardly ever here.

I study the ceiling, remembering a time when I would enjoy showing off my genius, a time where I felt like I had a goal in life. My grades are still A's, of course, but I just can't seem to care anymore. I've taken to going to a bridge in town and sitting with my legs hanging over the edge; it's a beautiful sight to see the river far below, but there's another reason I go there that I can't quite place.

On one of those days, as stars twinkled in the sky above and the blackness of the night molded with the ground below like smudged paint, I sat on the bridge and looked down at the dark river snaking below me. Sharp rocks jutted out of the sides of the river, and the current forced the water to slam into them. I watched as a tree branch was carried into one of the rocks and torn to pieces by the fierce rapids.

Vaguely, without really meaning to, I imagined what it would be like if I fell off the bridge and hit the rocks...Would I die? Or would I just be smashed beyond recognition and then paralyzed? I stood up vacantly, and then put one of my feet out above the water. The fierce wind from this high up raged against me, threatening to make me lose my balance and fall off. The thought didn't seem all that bad, but I retracted my foot anyways, and turned around to leave the bridge and go home.


End file.
